Katawa Shoujo Forums

Kind of an odd way I ended up here I suppose. I play a LOT of different video games, and I had never really tried out the whole VN genre. The first one I played was Tsukihime, and I really didn't like it so I stopped playing VNs for a while.

A friend of mine told me I should watch Clannad, and decided what the hell why not? I was really impressed by it as a whole for how good the story was and how emotionally invested I became in it (even with the shitty ending it had......let's call it "Mass Effect 3'ing"). I looked it up on wikipedia and found out it was based off of a VN. I decided to put giving VNs a second chance on my list of things to eventually do after watching this series.

Finally, I remember Destructoid reviewed a VN (whos name escapes me) that got a really low score. The score was low, but a lot of the concepts the game had that the review talked about sounded pretty fun. I read the comments section, and found everyone recommending KS as an alternative to the game that was being reviewed. I found out about it and was thrown off at first (as I assume most people are) by the game's premise(A date sim with crippled girls). I looked up a few gaming forums to try to find more info on it and was amazed at the fan reactions to this game. Tons of people talking about how the game had affected them and posting their live stories and how KS changed it. I decided, awful premise be damned, if this many people are reacting this much to it I need to try it out.

Paddy wrote:As for the forums? Well, at first I wanted to talk about it on a theological level with the folks over at the Catholic Answers forums. But I didn't know if I should, so I came here.

Hey, intriguing...Now I will have to hunt down your posts on the subject. Let's see, now to remember how phpBB handles member-specific post searches....

SplendidClaw wrote:Kind of an odd way I ended up here I suppose. I play a LOT of different video games, and I had never really tried out the whole VN genre. The first one I played was Tsukihime, and I really didn't like it so I stopped playing VNs for a while.

A friend of mine told me I should watch Clannad, and decided what the hell why not? I was really impressed by it as a whole for how good the story was and how emotionally invested I became in it (even with the shitty ending it had......let's call it "Mass Effect 3'ing"). I looked it up on wikipedia and found out it was based off of a VN. I decided to put giving VNs a second chance on my list of things to eventually do after watching this series.

Finally, I remember Destructoid reviewed a VN (whos name escapes me) that got a really low score. The score was low, but a lot of the concepts the game had that the review talked about sounded pretty fun. I read the comments section, and found everyone recommending KS as an alternative to the game that was being reviewed. I found out about it and was thrown off at first (as I assume most people are) by the game's premise(A date sim with crippled girls). I looked up a few gaming forums to try to find more info on it and was amazed at the fan reactions to this game. Tons of people talking about how the game had affected them and posting their live stories and how KS changed it. I decided, awful premise be damned, if this many people are reacting this much to it I need to try it out.

Judging by your avatar, can I assume that Persona 4, with its mild VN-style elements, was also a factor in your interest?... Whether it was or not, your avatar makes you cool in my book.

Come to think of it... In the past two years I've gotten into both Persona 4 and Clannad, and my sister played Tsukihime after many friends recommended it to her for the story. Man, plenty of coincidences. I guess we run in the same circles, as far as interests are concerned.

The only difference is that she loved Tsukihime. Although, she was playing the "not-porn" version... a hack of the game that removed the adult scenes, since Tsukihime apparently doesn't have a "skip adult content" option like Katawa Shoujo's. And I've heard Tsukihime's adult scenes are both particularly bad and unimportant to the plot. Well, that's all hearsay......

Relating to Persona: I've always liked games that had not so much of a "dating sim" element, but a "relationship sim" element. Meaning, platonic friendships are portrayed alongside possible love interest paths. Before Persona 3 and 4, I saw the same element in the Star Ocean series. Haven't yet found a VN that really seeks to simulate friendships alongside romance, though, unless you count the peripheral characters in the story that you aren't currently "pursuing."

Judging by your avatar, can I assume that Persona 4, with its mild VN-style elements, was also a factor in your interest?... Whether it was or not, your avatar makes you cool in my book

I suppose when I think about it, it sort of retroactively was. I mean, I enjoyed the social link aspect of the Persona's, but never really thought about it as a system that was mutually exclusive to VNs. Now that I look back on it though, it does make sense that when I first initially heard about VNs and how you build relationships with people, that I could draw a parallel to Persona and think "Well hey I liked that, maybe I'll like this too". Very interesting indeed....... Oh and hey thanks for considering me cool! It's kind of hard to think about that myself these days while struggling to study for the LSAT, playing JRPGs, and trying to get jobs in law firms/accounting offices haha.

Come to think of it... In the past two years I've gotten into both Persona 4 and Clannad, and my sister played Tsukihime after many friends recommended it to her for the story. Man, plenty of coincidences. I guess we run in the same circles, as far as interests are concerned.

Yeah, I guess my gaming interests have always been pretty varied. I've been playing videogames since I was about 3 (So around 22 years.....man I feel old), and have a vested interest in just about everything. MOBAs, fighting games, strategy games, rpgs, action, simulation, just about anything really. I guess I've been into VNs lately though because of how they can get you really emotionally invested into a story. It's something that has only happened to me when I play STELLAR RPGs(Such as Persona 3/4, Suikoden 2, Tales of the Abyss, Dragon Age: Origins, etc). I guess I find emotional immersion to be something that is very hard to find in modern games, and I try to hang on tight to the games that can pull it off. With VNs, however, they seem to rely almost entirely on this immersion. So yeah, needless to say I've been trying to play more of these lol.

Relating to Persona: I've always liked games that had not so much of a "dating sim" element, but a "relationship sim" element. Meaning, platonic friendships are portrayed alongside possible love interest paths. Before Persona 3 and 4, I saw the same element in the Star Ocean series. Haven't yet found a VN that really seeks to simulate friendships alongside romance, though, unless you count the peripheral characters in the story that you aren't currently "pursuing."

I agree, I mean sure you could "date" your party members in 3 and 4 but it was never really fleshed out nor was it ever the main concept of the game. I've always thoroughly enjoyed how much of a theme friendship was in the Persona games. They also do a great job of breathing life into the characters, and really making their struggles believable. Like in P3, for example, Junpei was 100% my dudebro (Sorry Kenji). When he became mad at the MC during the 3rd or 4th full moon.....I could totally relate to why he was pissed. I mean was he a little too whiny about it? Yeah, but given the circumstances I thought he had a good reason to be kind of depressed. It's realistic emotion like this that can really separate the powerful stories from the mediocre ones. I also think it would be interesting to play a solid VN that perhaps focuses on friendship more rather than romance. I think some of my favorite moments in KS have been the friendly banter between Hisao and the girls on their path(I thought this was pulled off really well with Emi).

I read a review of the game in Pelit magazine plus a somewhat lengthy article in an anime magazine. I though the main idea of KS was great and it had also got some relatively good ratings, so I decided to download it, as it couldn't hurt. The rest is history.

Saw the game logo on a desktop picture in a "Post your desktop" thread, few days ago. Finished Emi's route today, got the good ending.

Friend of mine told me about this VN, there wasn't anything better to do so I decided to check it out, found the forums via google.

I just started playing Katawa Shoujo and a numerous amount of times I ended up here looking for images and such. Then I saw this nice icon someone was wearing so I wanted to check out their profile. It said I have to join to see it. So I said "Why the fuck not?! "

Well I learned about Katawa Shoujo via the Escapist, which I'll go every week or so. My first thoughts were "Man Japan is weird" and, "Wait people are really invested in this? Okay I'll download it as joke, maybe laugh awkwardly though it and then delete it." Well then I feel in love, and actually discovered the origin and whatnot.

The forums I found by looking for more art based on the game. I saw the topics and figured hey, like minded individuals.

I first discovered KS, back when it was only a demo, while searching for more VNs to play. I'd just finished some fetish-related one. The concept was strange so, me being me, I was intrigued. Eventually, I got around to downloading it. Played it. Withdrew into myself for hours, undergoing a strangely deep introspection. Googled for a forum to vent the results. Found this.

Came for venting. Stayed for Myshina and ShinigamiKenji. And the rest, I suppose, but those two are entertaining.

Ghotiheads wrote:Well I learned about Katawa Shoujo via the Escapist, which I'll go every week or so. My first thoughts were "Man Japan is weird" and, "Wait people are really invested in this? Okay I'll download it as joke, maybe laugh awkwardly though it and then delete it." Well then I feel in love, and actually discovered the origin and whatnot.

The forums I found by looking for more art based on the game. I saw the topics and figured hey, like minded individuals.

Pretty much the same as this guy. I found Katawa Shoujo via The Escapist, found it to my liking, and decided to join due to a fanfic project. And also because i didn't need to worry about Clannad fans killing me here for saying Katawa Shoujo is better.

Xanatos wrote:Came for venting. Stayed for Myshina and ShinigamiKenji. And the rest, I suppose, but those two are entertaining.

Thanks for the praise!! I feel somewhat embarassed now, though... Guess I'm not used to praise at all. But thanks, and you are very entertaining too!

For me, I don't remember how I actually heard of Katawa Shoujo. I remember it being in the beginning of the year, though. I suppose I was bored and wanted a different kind of game, so eventually I found KS and became curious. There was also some hype around it in some sites too, with it being developed by some people from 4chan, misconceptions about being "Cripple Porn" and all. So I wanted to give it a try, but since my connection was crappy, I decided to download it via Torrent, but I couldn't download it that day, and I forgot about it for a while.

Around May, I wanted to download another Torrent, and I just opened the file. I was surprised when it appeared that KS had finished downloading. "Well,I had forgotten it and it was now in my HD, why not trying it?" So, I installed it and played. And made me forget what I had downloaded too that day. The rest, I think everybody know the feels.

My first visits to the forums followed up, as I was avid for more things related to KS. I lurked here for about 1-2 weeks, but when I got to the Fanfiction threads, I had to make an account to praise the authors. And, this week, I became more active and met really nice and interesting people. Especially, Xanatos, Helbereth and Pyramid Head made me laugh and think and reflect and remember some feels, all within 20 minutes.

TL;DR: Found KS at random in January, but only remembered it about 4 months later. Had all the feels we all know. Eventually I wanted more and ended up here.

ShinigamiKenji wrote:

Xanatos wrote:Came for venting. Stayed for Myshina and ShinigamiKenji. And the rest, I suppose, but those two are entertaining.

Thanks for the praise!! I feel somewhat embarassed now, though... Guess I'm not used to praise at all. But thanks, and you are very entertaining too!

Aw damn, I made Kenji blush. Not sure if want.

A year ago or so I was on a hunt for a non-ero dating sim game (With stats and all that jazz), and people kept reccomending KS, nobody actually had any good dating sim suggestions, so I ended up checking out KS. I got bored with it, because I was expecting it to actually be a dating sim instead of a VN. But when the full version came out I ended up picking it up and tried it out again. I finished Emi's route and got hit with a hard case of the feels, I was incredibly relived when I found that there were a bunch of other people experiencing the same thing, I made some posts here and there, but was never really active, and left right after I recovered.

6 months later, I finished Lilly's route, and even though I didn't get the feels this time, I loved it so much, I came back to the forum under a new name, and here I am, I'm planning on staying here for a while, lurking, and posting a bit when I have something to say.

SplendidClaw wrote:I found out about it and was thrown off at first (as I assume most people are) by the game's premise(A date sim with crippled girls).

awful premise be damned

What makes the premise any more awful than every other date sim out there?

I've never understood the controversy this thing got. What's so abhorrent about dating a disabled chick as opposed to an able one? The whole controversy always just sounded like prejudice pretending to be something better. Cripples date and fuck too, it's not a big deal.

Seems a few thought back then that it'd be about raping them or something and in that case, I could understand it...But as far as I could tell, there were no suggestions anywhere of it being a rape sim so that's just the people being sick-minded fucks...

I was wandering in random internet places and a random blog mentioned KS, curiosity did the rest.